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The January Garden

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.oh my, I just can’t believe that this is the last week of January. We are just a couple of weeks away from our average last frost date which means we need to be starting some seeds soon. We don’t normally plant our warm weather transplants until early March but I like to have them ready so we don’t have to buy them. I’m certainly not a purist about starting seeds, some years it just doesn’t work out and we just buy transplants from our local nursery. But this year, I think starting seeds is doable so it’s on my list for this weekend. 

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

We spent some time on Saturday laying out our spring garden and going through our seeds. It’s nice having the previous season’s layouts in our gardening notebook to refer back to. I always think I’ll remember gardening stuff but my life is so full of other things I just can’t. I’m glad I can just pull the notebook off the shelf and have all the information at my fingertips. I’m also pretty happy that we only need to get a few seeds this year. We have quite a lot of seeds from our Seeds of the Month membership, some are new things that I’m excited to try. 

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

We pruned all the fruit trees and the moringa tree. We really need to prune our pecan trees but need a bucket truck to get that high. We also noticed that one of our apple trees has blossoms on it. We haven’t had near enough chill hours so I’m sure we won’t get apples this year. But the blossoms are pretty. (If you aren’t sure what chill hours here, this will explain it and more.)

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

This is a long view of about half of our garden. There are beds on the right side too. 

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

We’ve only had a couple of mild frosts this year, so we still have cherry tomatoes and peppers growing. It’s crazy but we’re enjoying having tomatoes in January. The downside of a mild winter is that we’ll have more garden pests this spring and summer. We removed the last of the basil and put straw on the beds that didn’t have straw on them. We have two more beds to clean out and put straw in. 

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

We sowed more carrots, repeater onions, peas and bean seeds. We still have some bean plants that are producing but I want to save those seeds so we’re no longer picking them to eat. 

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

We planted some raspberry and blackberry canes and 50 strawberry roots. Who knew we could get strawberries in January. Esther has picked and eaten two this week. 

 

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

This month we’ve been harvesting cabbage, chinese cabbage (although most of it has gone to seed and we’re just leaving it for the bees), kale, chard, repeater onions, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, peppers and a couple of strawberries. 

This is our 5th spring on this property and I’m finally feeling like our garden isn’t so overwhelming. I think having raised beds has really helped make it feel manageable and covering beds with compost and straw when they are resting has also helped. All but two of our beds are ready for planting and those two will be ready by the end of the week. 

Our big garden goal for this spring is to lay cardboard and wood chips in all the walkways to control the grass. Last year we had much more rain than we normally do and we just couldn’t keep up with mowing the walkways. It wouldn’t be so bad if the grass would have just stayed in the walkways but when it was thigh high it would fall over and drop seeds into the beds. Hopefully cardboard and wood chips will help with that. 

The Gardening Notebook is the ultimate gardening tool. This printable notebook has over 120 pages of information and organization to help you have the garden you've always dreamed of.

The zone 9 January garden is full of goodness. This is usually our coldest month and the winter vegetables love the cooler temperatures. Come see what's in our garden this January.

What’s going on in yonuary garden?

Thanks for sharing with your friends!

Rachel E.

Wednesday 27th of January 2016

You are so lucky to be able to grow citrus. I wish we could, but alas...not so in VA.